OTTAWA – Transport
Minister Denis Lebel says there are enough federal inspectors in place
to maintain Canada’s strong aviation safety record, although his
department says more than 100 inspector jobs have been vacant for years.
The government’s
oversight plan for Canada’s civil aviation system includes a staff
compliment of 880 inspectors. These positions include both licensed
pilot inspectors, charged with ensuring companies and pilots are capable
of conducting safe flight operations; and technical inspectors, tasked
with making sure the equipment and associated systems to support the
operations are safe to use.
There are 136 vacancies or unfilled
inspection positions, Transport Canada confirmed, saying the current
vacancy level “has been consistent for several years due to the normal
attrition rate.”
Despite these chronic vacancies, Lebel said “we
have enough inspectors and resources to do our job,” pointing to a 25
percent decrease in aviation accidents in Canada in the last decade.
“They are at the lowest in all time,” Lebel said this week in answer to a
question from NDP transport critic Olivia Chow.
Lebel’s
spokesman, Mike Winterburn, added that the number of aviation inspector
positions hasn’t been cut and the department is trying to fill
vacancies. “While we have enough inspectors working to maintain Canada’s
strong aviation safety record, Transport Canada continues to regularly
run recruitment processes across the country to fill vacancies for
inspectors and other safety personnel,” he said.
However, the
head of the union representing pilot inspectors says the chronic
vacancies creates a heightened safety risk for Canadian air travellers.
“I
used their own charts to look at how many people they planned for or
say they needed,” Daniel Slunder, president of the Canadian Federal
Pilots Association, said Friday after releasing his association’s own
study of staffing.
“You’re not doing all the work and you’re
saying you’re short of people, but it’s okay. Well, I don’t see that as
logical. It doesn’t sound truthful to me.”
According to his
group’s study, 100 of 499 licensed pilot inspector positions are
currently vacant. This includes a vacancy rate of 21 percent (60 of 289)
among front-line pilot inspection positions in different regions, and a
vacancy rate of 19 per cent (40 of 210 positions) at Transport Canada’s
headquarters in Ottawa.
Overall, aviation enforcement (30
percent of positions are vacant) and aviation safety system (29 percent
are vacant) are the most shorthanded operations at Transport Canada, the
pilot inspector study concludes.
“I’m not sure what they’re doing to hire because I’m not seeing it,” said Slunder.
Martin
Eley, director general of Transport Canada’s civil aviation branch,
told parliamentarians earlier this week that the demographic reality of
the workforce poses an additional challenge.
“(The) organization
is 1,400 people altogether. With a natural turnover rate, it ends up
giving you a significant number. In one area during the course of 12
months we recruited 36 people and we lost 37 so there is active
recruitment going on. The baby boomers are part of that trend.
“We
clearly need to staff the positions. It isn’t for a lack of trying,”
Eley told members of the House of Commons public accounts committee.
Read more: http://www.canada.com
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